1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the present invention relate to a method and apparatus for touchscreen based user interface (UI) interaction, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for UI interaction that includes a volume control by using circular UI graphics and a switching between different application images by dragging an indicator on a touchscreen of a multimedia terminal device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Multimedia content players having touchscreens (such as personal computers (PCs), personal digital assistants (PDAs), portable multimedia players (PMPs), and MPEG Audio Layer III (MP3) players) are widely popular. A multimedia content player provides a variety of types of contents, including images and audio signals. A touchscreen is an input/output device supplementing or substituted for a keyboard, a mouse, and/or other input devices. A user operates the multimedia content player by directly touching the touchscreen with, for example, a finger or a stylus pen. By using different touching gestures, a plurality of functions (such as reproduction, stop, pause, fast forward, volume up, volume down, file transference, enlargement, reduction, file navigation, and image rotation) may be performed on multimedia contents.
FIG. 1 is an external view illustrating a method of controlling audio volume in a conventional multimedia content player. Referring to FIG. 1, (−) and (+) graphic buttons are displayed on a screen from which volume is controlled. The (−) and (+) graphic buttons are operated when they are pushed like other touch buttons. For example, a user may control an audio volume by pushing each of the (−) and (+) graphic buttons. In this case, when the (−) and (+) graphic buttons are pushed for a long time, corresponding functions may be performed repeatedly.
However, a conventional touchscreen based multimedia content player may not take full advantage of a touchscreen and/or may not operate the multimedia content player while, for example, the multimedia content player is in a pocket because the stationary buttons may only be manipulated by viewing the touchscreen.
Also, the touchscreen of the conventional multimedia content player provides a single-point based dragging interaction by using a single finger. However, the single-point based dragging interaction may not perform a number of functions on a display unit having a limited size.
Furthermore, the conventional touchscreen based multimedia content player only switches between different applications by using a main menu (or a home menu). For example, when a user views text and wants to control audio volume on a multimedia content player, the user must return to a main menu in order to view audio volume options.